This invention relates to high speed signal processing circuits and more particularly to special purpose VLSI coprocessing circuits for performing Fourier analysis and synthesis.
Spectacular advances have been made in recent years in the development of general purpose signal processing VLSI chips based on a microprocessor type of architecture. Though the development has been very rapid, the next generation of signal processing chips will require some innovative changes. One such change is the use of special-purpose coprocessors for basic operations such as narrow band filtering and Fourier analysis.
When performing real time signal processing, the continuous flow of data together with the complexity of the computations that have to be performed make it difficult to design a general purpose system which will perform a specific task efficiently. On the other hand, if an efficient algorithm for a specific task is found, there must be a suitable match between algorithm and VLSI layout if the solution is suitable for realization in hardware.
It is accordingly a principal object of the invention to efficiently and accurately perform a large class of signal processing tasks (including Fourier analysis, narrow-band filtering, and beamforming) by means of very large scale integration (VLSI) devices.